Please don't go, I love you so
by Sanetwin
Summary: Set after the finale. Sarah is searching for Kira with little success. However, a surprise visitor in her house changes everything. (Partially inspired by the song Breezeblocks by Alt-J)
1. Chapter 1

Set after the finale. Sarah is searching for Kira with little success. However, a surprise visitor in her house changes everything.

* * *

There is a pain that exists outside the physical world; a type of pain that can't be rubbed out by kneading fingers or bared through with gritting teeth and clenched fists. There was a time when I thought I knew what that pain felt like, as I had often knocked elbows with sorrow over my lifetime, and I had labeled it with symptoms such as heart burn and blurry eyes.

Then Kira went missing.

In that moment, when I screamed out the window for my little baby with teary eyes and a cracked voice, I knew what mental pain really was. I had put my head back in the house, stared vaguely at the rummaged room where Kira was stolen from, and felt as if I were drunk. My mind had felt the crack of unbearable loss and immediately became shrouded in denial. I went through the nine stages of grief in that moment and repeated it like a nightly ritual for the next three days. On the morning of the third day I woke up and started looking for Kira.

It was then, when I shoved the blanket of disbelief from my shoulders, that my body experienced the full force of my loss. The pain festered in my heart and sat in my bones like lead letting its poisonous fumes seep into my veins.

Since then, I've spent every minute not sleeping searching for Kira. The kidnappers had made an effort to rummage through the whole house in order to impress the image of a true robbery. But I was not to be fooled, I knew who was to blame for Kira's kidnapping. Rachel Duncan and her prestigious Dyad institute stole my baby, and I planned to take her back by force. This caused much chagrin to Cosima, who often tried to remind me that having a calculated plan usually warranted success. I ignored her of course, as usual. Cosima is a genius and she cares about many things, my daughter included, but she is not a mother. Calculations and projected success are irrelevant to the heart and they won't be useful in finding Rachel and her clan, especially since their goal was to shoot for my heart.

Now I stand in front Mrs. S' house, with shoes soaked through with snow, glaring at the front door. I've come to hate this door. There was a time when this door was the entrance to a warm house to which my daughter frolicked and played but now it is no more than a sullen reminder of my loss. Every time I turn to this door, the defeat of another unsuccessful day is fresh and the heart is always raw. With slow, slopping steps I reach the door and place a gloved hand on the knob. Begrudgingly, I turn the knob sharply to the left. The door opens with a long creak and out wafts the aura of an empty home.

But I sense that something is off the moment I enter the house. My shoes leave expanding puddles on the hardboard floor as I stand staring in front of me. Something is definitely off. It is less a physical difference but a sensation, a smell, or perhaps an aura. Something is bringing life to the small hairs at the back of my neck. Then I see it: a flicker of white.

A vague glance to the second floor warrants a minor heart attack when I see the difference. A light! A light is on in the upstairs bathroom!

"Kira!" I yell as I propel myself up the stairs. "Kira!"

The door to the bathroom is closed but a glowing light reaches out to me from beneath the crack. Everything around me is dark except this strip of white at my feet. Ripping the gloves from each hand, I reach out for the doorknob. Wrapping my fingers around it, I turn it sharply to the right and push. It opens silently and the glowing light turns blinding. It doesn't make sense, there is too much light. I cover my eyes with one hand and squint into the room.

The first thing I see is red.

"Kira?" I say, my tone mumbling and confused. It's all I can say. It's all I have been saying for weeks.

"Sarah"

I recoil. That voice...it can't be Kira. It's too angry, too solemn, and yet there is an affection laced in it. My eyes focus and immediately my heart plummets. I take a step back but it's too late. She cocks her head and a mane of blonde hair follows her movements like a curly halo. She's wearing the same shirt I saw her in last; one of her hands is hovering over the torn hole in the shirt over her left breast and the other is grasping a cattle prod. The prod is long with a molten red tip.

"There's no way..." I start to say but my voice cracks and I can't go on.

"Sarah," She says again, and her voice is almost soft. "Have you forgotten me?"

I take a short gasp of a breath and find that it's not nearly enough; her haunting voice wraps around my head with a shrieking echo.

"Helena...How-" I ask and she cocks her head to the right. Her hands raise over her head to cup the air which makes the cattle prod press against the ceiling with a hiss.

"God resurrected me for his purpose. He saved me from death and left a mark." She says in her usual slow drawl. Despite Ukrainian being her native language her mouth has always worked against her tongue, as if her very composition were waged in war, and the result is her nearly incomprehensible dialect. While she talks, she twists the cattle prod in her hands and at the last word her lips twist downward. I've seen that expression before, that look of cruelty and displeasure, it flashed in her eyes right before she butted me in the head. My eyes focus on the cattle prod and I take a miniature step towards the doorway. Quickly, my mind fills with questions and conversation in order to keep Helena focused on her story.

"He marked you? Why?" I ask while forcing my eyes to widen in a way that makes me look genuinely concerned. She hummed disinterestedly, apparently tired of talking. Her eyes refocus on the cattle prod tip and she turns it in front of her eyes with a face made of stone. "Why did he mark you, Helena?"

Her eyes meet mine and it felt as if two charred pieces of coal were staring back at me.

"I don't know," She says and takes a step towards me. "I did not shoot my twin sestra."

Now the cattle prod is pointed towards me; I can feel the heat radiating off the steel and I pull my head back. However, the movement only causes Helena to react. Her unarmed hand swings back and I shut my eyes in anticipation of the pain. My head jerks to the left and I hear a resounding slap in the darkness; immediately, my eyes water and my hand reflexively touches my jaw.

"You slapped me?" I ask, dumbfounded, as I look down at my hand. But she has a burning cattle prod. When I open my eyes, I find her inches from my face. Her dark eyes are no longer flat and lifeless but vibrant and angry, more like the raging sea in the middle of the night. With a well placed kick I am on the floor and she rests over me so that her legs are restraining my arms to my sides. The exhaustion of searching endlessly for Kira has rendered me weak and malleable. Staring into these resentful eyes I am reminded of Tomas's dark fate.

"Would you like to see?" Helena asks, her eyes widening into a strange expression of innocence. She lifts the dark wool of the Clash t-shirt to reveal a long stretch of stitches in the shape of an X from her collar to her abdomen.

"Jesus Bloody Christ!" I yelp and turn my head away as bile retches from my stomach. Almost every inch of skin is held together by a dark colored suture; the edges of her flesh is red and white with pus. Above her skin-colored bra on the left side is the circular scar where the bullet entered her. She takes the cattle prod with both hands and hovers it over my chest. The tip has lost its red flare but I can still feel its heat.

"I think He marked the wrong twin. Should I mark you?" She asks and adds an contemplative hum as she presses her index finger at a specific spot above my left breast. My breath catches and I can feel tears fill my eyes once again.

"I thought God made no mistakes," I say and I can hear my voice tremble. My brain is still trying to think its way out of this. It races for a purpose beyond eluding death, it thinks in a mantra: I have to live, without me Kira will be lost forever. I have to live for Kira.

"This is a different God. He is borne from science," she replies but her focus is no longer on the conversation. She's moved her empty hand towards my face and I don't dare to move while the prod is still in her other hand. Her fingertips are cold. They spread over my cheek and grasp at the skin until blood has collected at the spot.

Then something clicks in my head. God borne of science? I seem to recall Cosima ranting on and on about Dr. Leekie calling himself a God in the eyes of Plato and some more bullshit about self-directed evolution.

"Neolutionism?" I ask but Helena doesn't answer. While in thought the cattle prod has drooped from her grip. It now lays on the ground beside my restrained hand. Both of her hands are wrapped around my face so that her fingertips lay beneath my eyes. Her face is contorted in a way that would suggest unrestrained grief. Her chapped lips separate and the lower one trembles. She stares at me with drowning eyes.

She begins to speak. At first she is at a whisper but with each word her voice climbs higher until she is screeching.

"You hurt me the most. You killed me, you killed my dream and my purpose. Because of you they tore me apart and-and sewed me back together and apart and together again and again." Helena is speaking too quickly for her mouth. Her lips tremble and twitch as if she were speaking but the words are only heard in her mind. In her excitement, she sits up from her straddling position and plants both hands opposite my head. Silent now, she stares at me as if trying to communicate the intricacies of her heart through her mind. She struggles to find the right words and her face contorts into an expression of silent anguish. Her eyes shut and entire frame seems to tremble as if her body were overcome with her internal struggle.

As if she were experiencing a pain that could not be felt on the flesh or in the bone, but in the mind. My hand finds the abandoned cattle prod. I grasp it tightly in my hand, letting the heat sear into the flesh.

I see it now, the agonizing grief she fails to communicate, though I don't understand it. I am her unbearable loss.

Without a word, I raise the bar above our heads and connect it with her blonde mane.


	2. Chapter 2

**I suppose I should point this out since the story could be easily misconstrued. The story is about Helena and Sarah as twin sisters, not as romantic partners. (It's also about Cosima and her beautiful hands but that's beside the point) Cool, so thanks for reading.**

...

* * *

Her screams, if you could call those guttural sounds screams, can be heard through the floorboards. I've got a pack of ice wrapped around my hand and I sit on the couch with my feet planted firmly on the carpeted floor. In the basement, Helena is tied to the column opposite the one she escaped from three weeks ago. Her every movement is reverberated through the floor and translates into miniature vibrations that can be felt by the bottom of her feet.

How did Dr. Leekie do it? I saw Helena die. I watched her take that last shuddering breath and grow still; I saw the puddle of blood spread past her outstretched arms like wings. Moreover, how did he- the ultimate scientist behind her creation- convince _her_ that he was divine. The leap from Promethean to Neolutionist is large; in fact, they are on polar opposite sides of the spectrum.

Three accented knocks bring me back to reality. Standing up, I walk to the door with a groan; I am already sore from this evening. With one hand on the doorknob, I turn it sharply and step back in one movement.

"Hey, I came as soon as I could," she enters in a flourish and immediately begins pacing around the room. Already, her hands are flying around her like two white doves. "Delphine won't be coming, I hope you don't mind, I just didn't want to bring her into this...particular situation," Cosima says while pivoting to my direction; her hands pause mid-flight while she waits for my reaction. I shrug with an awkward bite to my lip: I don't know where to stand with Delphine. Cosima tells me that I should give her a chance and that she can be trusted, like Paul, but I find that hard to believe.

"Yeah, of course it's fine," I say, walking back to the couch.

"Okay, so where did you put Helena?" Cosima asks while her hands flutter around her as if trying to guess Helena's placement.

"In the basement," I reply. She hums and glances in that general vicinity before looking back at me. She bites her lower lip and moves to stand beside me. After a moment, she places a pale hand on my shoulder and gives it a squeeze.

"I'm sorry," she says and takes another breath as if she intended to continue but no other words are spoken. A portion of me urges to shake her off and claim to be okay, and that she doesn't need to be here, but that was the old Sarah Manning and the Sarah I am today, who needs her clone sisters desperately.

"I don't know what to do here," I reply instead, looking straight ahead.

"Well, we need to figure out what to do with Helena"

"Obviously," I sigh and look up at her. "How is this possible, Cosima? She was dead, I know that for sure." I say and Cosima looks down at me through her glasses; looking past those brown eyes, I can see the wheels turning as she mentally roves the encyclopedia of her mind for an answer. Suddenly, her eyes spark and her hand takes flight from my shoulder indicating that she has an answer.

She turns to face me and her hands come up in front of her and I sit up, prepared to listen attentively. As much as it is a struggle to listen to Cosima it can also be a beautiful experience and almost artistic in its delivery because she's passionate enough that she wants her listeners to understand her mind as well as she does. Similar to a painter who fills in the blank canvas with his paintbrush Cosima closes the gap between her mind and the minds of others' with her hands. While she talks, they weave through the air with strokes both delicate and bold in order to portray an image for her abstract mind.

"There are two types of death known in the world. One can be legally dead, which is when it is no longer appropriate to continue medical treatment and resuscitation is perceived to be impossible. The doctor must then pronounce the time in which the person became legally dead. Clinical death, however, is different. For one to be clinically dead would mean that a person has lost all blood circulation and respiration and has gone into cardiac arrest. The brain may be active for a couple of minutes after this which would explain the irregular gasping you saw because the fractured connection between the brain and nervous system causes disorderly muscle movement. But while a person is clinically dead, they can still be revived and the heart can be restarted."

"But I was there for at least thirty minutes and she didn't move once."

"Well, there was an experiment where doctors were able to fully revive a cat after an hour of being clinically dead. They must have come the moment you left and resuscitated her on the spot. The reperfusion injury would have been rather large after that duration of time so they would have needed to be able to replace most of her organs and maybe even a part of her brain since that's the part that decays the fastest. It's actually kind of amazing if you think about it, I mean, the fact that she can even walk at this point. The plasticity of her body must be astounding to survive so much surgery. What I'm wondering is how they managed to have so many organs available on hand. Do you think they are developing our genetic material in petri dishes?"

"Okay, stop. Save it for Delphine 'cause I'm not interested. What I can't understand is _why_ they would save her? What is she to them? She killed most of their subjects"

"We could ask her."

"Yeah, there's no way I'm doing that. If she were ever sane she definitely isn't anymore. She'd break my neck the moment I walk in there," I say and the thought is enough to make my neck ache.

"I don't want to tell you what to do but I think that Helena being here can be a good thing."

"_How_? Can you explain? Because I don't see how having a psycho killer in my basement is a good thing. I need to find my daughter. I need to know that she's safe and that she's happy and being well fed. I need to know if Mrs. S took her or if she's captured as well. I don't need this." I say and I can feel the tears stinging my eyes.

I bring my thumbnail to my teeth to keep busy but it's too late now. My thoughts are dark now and they file in one after another like raindrops in a hurricane and they burden me with their weight. What if Kira is dead? Cosima clears her throat and I force my misty eyes to her once again. Her face is sympathetic and she looks me in the eye. My thumb suddenly feels raw and I notice that the nail is gnawed to the flesh.

"Sarah, if Rachel Duncan really did steal Kira then she would be at the Dyad Institute and if what I'm saying is true, which I think it is, then Helena has been sheltered there. She could help you find Kira."

"Then you go talk to her, yeah? She'd love you," I snap at her and she puts her hands up in retreat. "Yeah, I didn't think so."

There's a moment of silence between us in which Helena's lament reaches both of our ears. Cosima tips her head toward the sound as if she were fascinated by it. Her cry echoes in my head, bouncing off the walls and pulling at my nerves, until I have to put my head into my hands to muffle the sound.

"We have to consider our options here. Helena is in your house. You could let her go and deal with her another day, you could kill her again and make sure she doesn't come back, or, you could talk to her," Cosima says all of this matter-of-factly until the last part in which her tone inflects something softer and I roll my eyes. She's bent on getting me to talk to Helena, as if it were really that easy.

"You don't understand. I can't just talk to Helena. She can barely speak let alone listen. She doesn't think like we do, Cosima, she isn't rational. We end up talking right past each other," I say, trying with difficulty to explain it all in terms that could be understood. Helena is too much, too much for me. She wants too much, she feels too much, and she cares too much. It's hard to explain even in my mind but I remember the cold grip of fear as I lay on the floor of the warehouse feeling the sting of the chain around my neck even after its suffocating bite had gone. Helena stared down at me, surrounded by her drawings of us holding hands, and told me that we made a family. I hear Cosima clear her throat and find that her hand is holding mine.

"Sarah, you can do this. I'll be right there beside you," she says and after a moment I sigh and shrug, accepting it all in a small gesture. It doesn't really matter, in the end, whether I am scared or not, because Helena is the only one who can give me answers._ She_ holds the key to Kira.

Fifteen minutes later and Cosima and I are in front of the door to the basement. It had taken us fifteen minutes to meander down to the door despite it being only a few feet away from the living room. I place a hand on the doorknob and cringe as sound creeps in through the cracks of the door and reaches my ears like nails on a chalkboard. As the cool metal radiates into my burnt palm I wonder what this closed door will bring, although experience tells me nothing good. Cosima gives me a toothy smile in attempt to send me as much encouragement as she can as I turn the doorknob to the left and push. It turns in silently to reveal the dark and dank room within. Suddenly, all is silent.

One hand reaches in and flicks against the light switch. Within a second, the basement is illuminated and we peer into the room with squinting eyes.

Helena lays with her legs stretched into a V in front of her and her head is drooped so that her tangled blonde hair covers the majority of her face. Her hands are still tied behind her, held together by the thick white cord which had proven to be useless in the past; however, upon closer examination I see blood trickle down her tied hands as the cord had cut into her flesh during her struggle. Tension gathers like a thick morning fog and it stings my eyes.

"I've got your back," Cosima reminds me, as if sensing my increasing reluctance. With her hand on my shoulder we push into the room, walking against the fear like slopping through a bank of quicksand. We are only a few feet away from Helena now and I notice her undulating chest as she takes quick, clipped breaths. One step closer and I can hear her fast pants as she apparently fights to catch her breath. I frown at the sight of Helena catching her breath, it seems too human.

We are close enough now that if I were to extend my foot any more I could kick her leg. Her breathing quickens and she makes a low sound from the back of her throat, apparently noticing us. Immediately, I feel my heart jump with fear but I manage to keep my face calm.

"Helena, we need to talk." I say, managing to keep my voice steady enough. Helena lifts her head slowly. I can see her dark eyes glowing from behind the curtain of her blonde hair.

"Sarah," Helena drawls, leaning her head back on the column; her blonde hair sprawls across her face, masking her wild eyes, and sticking to her lips which are glossy with spit and blood. A single trail of blood drips down her chin from where she bit her lip. The sound of my name on her lips makes my skin crawl; her voice is hoarse from screaming and it makes her accent even darker than before. I wait, expecting her to say more, but she is silent once again; however, her eyes never leave me.

Now that I have her attention a million questions buzz through my mind at once. Is Cosima's theory right? While Helena stares at me I can't help but feel sucked into her gaze. Those dark eyes are the exact pigment as mine, and yet, they are completely different. Her every expression holds something familiar, even more so than the other clones, so that a sudden change in her expression gives me the jarring experience of watching my own reflection change. This is how it's always been with Helena. No matter how different the situation we are in this feeling of underlying intensity remains. Helena understood it from the very start and I can hear the memory of her voice in my head as she clutched the gun to her forehead. "_Can you feel it_?" A connection, she called it, and while I wished to pull away she yearned to make it stronger.

"Why are you here?" I ask, not truly interested in the answer since I was fairly certain that I already knew it. But it was an easy way to start and it helped to stop the buzzing in my head.

"I wanted to know-" Helena began softly, but seemed to lose her grasp of what she wanted to say.

"Wanted to know what?" I prompt, stepping in closer. Helena tore her eyes from mine in order to send a glance to Cosima. Hearing the faint gasp behind me, I search Helena's gaze for a hint of hostility; however, I can't find any overwhelming trace of aggression other than her normal animal-like disposition. Which is odd in itself considering her previously open hatred towards clones.

"If I could kill you," Helena finally says, her eyes meeting mine once again. My hands clench impulsively and my mind goes on the defensive at the seemingly open threat in her voice. But her face isn't taunting nor is it threatening, in fact, it almost looks defeated.

I want to move on, but Helena suddenly looks up at me attentively. With her eyebrows furrowed and her lips strained, she whispers something so quietly that it could have only been muttered to herself. However, I crouch anyway so that our eyes are level with each other, and this time I can hear her. "How could you do it? How could you kill me?" She asks, and lets out heavy breath as if uttering that question alone had depleted the little energy she had left.

Leaning back, I look her in the eye and frown.

"I did nothing that you were not capable of doing yourself," I replied with disgust. How dare she ask me how I could shoot her? As if it were as simple as pulling a trigger to me. I bite my lip to keep back a scowl. I'm not the murderer here.

"No!" Helena yells, her voice reaching that hysterical denial it had all that time ago in Maggie Chen's apartment. The hairs on the back of my neck rise as she sends me a withering look and her lips pull back into a snarl. "No, never" she repeats.

"Oh really, never? So when you threw that chain over my neck, what as that? A friendly pat on the back?"

She takes a clipped breath and parted her lips as if to respond but all that came out were disjointed mumbles. Confusion began to swirl in her eyes, making them dull and unfocused, and she blinked rapidly as if to collect her thoughts. I shook my head, wondering how broken I would have to be in order to be confused by my own thoughts and actions.

"I think she may have a concussion, Sarah," Cosima says from behind my shoulder and I start at the sound of her voice. She places a hand on my shoulder and appraises me silently. Her lips purse and from behind her glinting glasses I can see her eyes fill with sympathy. Her gaze flits between me and Helena and when she starts to speak I already know what she's going to say.

"No way, Cosima,"

"Sarah, we can't leave her down here. Her wounds need to be properly dressed and she has a concussion! She could die down here," Cosima sighs and her hands cup the air as if the gravity of the situation could literally be grasped.

"Good," I mutter and cross my arms, turning away from Helena's gaze but I can still hear her lamenting moan in the background.

"You don't mean that. Shooting her out of self-defense and letting her die out of neglect are two very different things and I know you know that," she says sternly, her eyes meeting mine mercilessly.

"Christ, _okay_. We'll put her on the couch but I still want her hands tied. Just give me a minute," I mumble and walk back to where Helena sits. Crouching beside her, I grasp her bony shoulder and feel her wince in response. Her head turns in my direction and her eyes find mine; for a moment, she stares at me with dull eyes, and I imagine a faint ringing sound resounding within her head instead of thought. But then she gasps and her eyes refocus on me, sharp and clear.

"Do you believe in Hell?" She asks and I frown, wondering how she expected me to answer, but she never gives me the chance because her head jerks downward towards her chest. Her left cheek dimples with a twisted smile while the other side remains unaffected, leaving a split impression of both the enigmatic madness of the Cheshire cat and the cold and vague taunting of a killer. "I've seen it. The demons tried to tear me apart but He saved me," she says, and with an oddly passionate voice. The passionate warmth turns sour and her voice deepens. "You were right, Sestra. Tomas lied...He wanted me to suffer." Her expression slackens slightly and she blinks rapidly, her strained focus beginning to dissolve once again; but she struggles against the fog in her mind and her lips form the words she wishes to say. "Sestra," she breathes. "God does exist. They told me to sign...to sign a paper so that I could live...and try again. To try..." She trails off and her eyes roll to the back of her skull until all that can be seen are two slight strips of white hiding behind her fluttering eyelids.

I sit back on my heels with a heavy heart. I have no idea what she was talking about but the desperation in her voice, and that sickly gleam of hope in her eyes, was enough to make my stomach churn with nausea.

"_Fuck_," I curse, pressing the palm against my forehead until I can feel the pressure at the bridge of my nose.

A new spout of anger towards Dr. Leekie bursts as the pieces come together in my mind and I can only imagine the lies they spun in order to imprint in her a new religion and a new standard to reach before salvation. These monsters now have Kira in their grasp, and I can't bear to think what they would do to her. What have they done to her already? The cruelty of this world is too heavy and far too frequent; I can't stand it, it's too much, I put my head in my hands and breathe deeply. How many weeks of his brainwashing did she endure before caving in? If the Neolutionists could turn a Promethean-raised killer into their slave what could they do to her daughter?

"Quickly, Sarah. You grab her legs. I've got her untied! We'll need to wake her up when we get her on the couch!" Cosima yells from the other side of Helena, forcing me from my silent panic. _Untied_? _Wake her up_? The two concepts refuse to merge in my mind. Cosima seems to sense this and, while hoisting Helena up from her arms, she sends me scolding look. "If she's unconscious for too long she will slip into a coma."

Nodding silently, I grab her ankles and together we maneuver our way out of the basement.

* * *

**Exposition time! Helena's mind is confusing so you can read this if you're lost. As Cosima hypothesizes, Helena was revived on the floor she was killed on. Which means they put the defibrillator on her right there. She became conscious for a moment and, in her agony, she saw the doctors and perceived them to be demons. Hence, she believed she was in Hell. They then transported her to the Dyad institute, where she underwent surgery. The X on her stomach/chest is so large because they needed to replace most of her organs due to the duration of time in which she was clinically dead. (In my headcanon, the Dyad institute has been growing clone material in their lab such as hearts and intestine that are made outside of the womb as Cosima begins to hypothesize before Sarah gets bored with her. This would make the surgery possible because her body would not go into shock accepting genetically identical organs and blood). **

**The line in the previous chapter of "marking" Helena was a reference to the Cain and Abel story from the bible. Cain was marked by God for killing Abel, which is why Helena is resentful and bitter because, in her mind, she is Abel. Dr. Leekie, being the manipulative asshole he is, played on her religiously fanatical mind in order to bend her to his will. **


	3. Chapter 3

Cosima has been in the bathroom for the past ten minutes. I can't hear what she's doing in there but she has essentially left me alone with Helena. I've been pressing a wet rag on her head with little effect to her state of consciousness. The only reaction I've seen from Helena so far is a faint, sleepy groan or the occasional movement of her head.

"You gotta help me out here, Cos," I call in the direction of the bathroom.

"Sorry, sorry!" Cosima yells and slips out of the bathroom with both hands preoccupied. The back of one hand wipes her mouth and turns over to run a thumb down the corner of her lips while the other hand grips several different topical antibiotics. Once she has dropped the medication down beside me, her hands immediately fly up in the air and rub together in thought.

"She won't wake up," I say, passing the towel to Cosima. She weighs the towel in her hand silently and moves to stand over Helena's semi-conscious form. With two hands, she holds the towel over Helena's head and wrings it tightly until all of the water has been squeezed from it. Helena starts awake, sitting up with a gasp and the water on her face drips down her chin to my Clash-T shirt. Cosima then places her hand on Helena's forehead, startling me with the bold move of confidence, and gently pushes her back into a laying position. Helena stares up at Cosima with wide, red-rimmed eyes and a slackened jaw.

"Hello," Cosima says, flashing her best smile, and places her free hand over Helena's twitching one. Helena's eyes slant at the contact and her hand jerks back as if burned, but Cosima's smile only grows warmer and her grip on Helena's hand tightens in a manner that is both restraining and comforting. "I need to see your wounds so that I can make them feel better."

I'm utterly shocked. My eyes are wide with rapt attention as they dart from Cosima to Helena; meanwhile, my hands grasp blindly for a sharp object to threaten Helena with for when she goes raving mad. Despite expectations, Helena doesn't attack, her mouth doesn't fill with foam, and her eyes don't blacken to obsidian. Outwardly, Helena is silent and still. With normal people, these signs may be seen as positive or at least indicative of neutrality but Helena is characteristically quiet and still, until she snaps. With Helena, stillness does not equal peacefulness nor does silence mean lack-of-thought. In many cases, I have seen Helena switch from relaxed serenity to aggressive hostility as suddenly as the flip of a switch. Nor has she been one to voice a blood-drenched thought. Perhaps Helena feels self-conscious by her befuddled speech for it is rare that she would choose to speak when she can observe in silence. I imagine violent thoughts swirling in her mind as thick and imminent as the night when her eyes rove Cosima's face with quiet intensity, flickering from her black-rimmed glasses to smiling lips.

"Which ones?" Helena answers with a soft, wavering tone of vulnerability underlying her strong accent. It's the very same voice she whispered in my ear as she wrapped her arms around me in the old war ship. I remember the words that accompanied that soft voice and they resound in my head, a haunting memory; such saddened vulnerability had cupped my heart and made me blind, but not anymore. The charm has worn off, for it was that same wavering voice she used while standing over Amelia's dead body.

I reach for Cosima's shoulder, attempting to communicate my caution to her, but I am too late. Cosima is unmoved by my hand, and hypnotized by the implications in the voice. Helena has affected her in the most sympathetic way. She presses her lips together and takes a deep, steadying breath through her nose. In a moment of condoling silence, Cosima runs her thumb along Helena's hand. Then she smiles again and her eyes crinkle genuinely, caught happily in Helena's trap.

Cosima may have one of the brightest minds of the scientific world but that brain power is entirely wasted when it comes to common sense. Caught up in the emotion, she turns away from the truth. She has Helena labeled so neatly in her mind as the abused loner that the blood-red violence of her past is washed out in the text. Blood can't haunt from a page, it doesn't ooze or leak, nor does it stain your hands and therefore Cosima does not fear it. With no fear to keep her alert she is no more than a lamb in Helena's hands.

"Let's start with the ones on your chest. I'll need to lift up your shirt. Is that okay?" She asks, and Helena nods her head. Kneeling in front of Helena, Cosima grasps the ragged fabric of her t-shirt with light fingers and pulls up until the wound is fully visible.

The wound looks as it did before which is to say gritty at best. With sutures so saturated with blood they have turned dark purple, with skin so red and inflamed that the ivory-white discharge festering on top nearly sizzles from the heat, and with rough scars scattered across the remaining pale skin. The circular scar above Helena's bloodstained bra stands out over the others. Isolated from the cross-like scars on Helena's torso, the circular scar is embedded to the skin above her heart and is a bleach-white color instead of red. However, rather than looking healed, the ghostly white pigmentation makes the scar look like an angry white eyeball, bleached from watching over weeks of agony with its monocular vision—as if the flesh slowly lost all blood circulation as it recorded the hours of prayers made silent by chattering teeth and of survival made only by the redistribution of pain with clenched fists and bitten flesh. Day by day, it watched as pain became the downfall to a lifetime of faith.

_Stop_. I rip my eyes away, blinking away tears. My hand is trembling and I hide it behind my hip. Biting my lip, I look at Cosima. Her back is facing me now and I can see the veins of her neck bulge at the sight.

"What happened to you, Helena?" She asks with a voice wrought with emotion. I cringe at the familiar question, remembering all too well the sight of Helena crawling towards me, reaching for me, while she begged to let her help me. Helena's eyes meet mine and I can't look away. Resentment trumps the varied emotions in her gaze and she looks at me as if to say_: You. You happened to me_.

A part of me wants to lash out, to grab her and make her understand. I want to scream in her face all the thoughts that have been stewing in my head. But I hold it in, letting the anger fester beneath the skin, so that I may keep it close. To lash out would be to let it go, and then I would have nothing but guilt to keep me company. There's too much guilt already with the constant onslaught of scenarios in my head. Not to mention the what-if scenarios in which Kira is cut open and sewn back together, tortured, and brainwashed like Helena. Anger is easier to manage: it boils the blood but spurns the brain to simpler subjects, and the world keeps turning.

Cosima's hand catches my attention, and I manage to drag my mind from my brooding thoughts in order to watch over Cosima. She is talking to Helena, uttering soft soothing sounds, as she applies a cotton swab doused in antibiotics to the injury.

Concerned, I focus on the murmur of conversation. "How does that feel? Better? Is it okay if I ask you about these injuries?" Cosima asks, her head cocking to the side with an encouraging smile pulling at the edge of her lips. She frames every word as an inquiry formed from true concern and curiosity. Every word is delivered with an eloquence that only Cosima can manage. She speaks to Helena as if they were friends, and it works. Somewhere along the way, Helena dropped her ambiguity and fell entirely for Cosima's words. Helena's face is now completely void of the deranged hostility I had become accustomed to and it creates miniature cracks in the dam of my resolve.

"Yes," is Helena's soft reply.

"How did these scars get so severe? You were revived by doctors, right?" Cosima asks, dabbing a fresh cotton swab on a new expanse of stitched skin.

"No. The God of science raised me from perdition," Helena parrots absently, her eyes devoid of emotion. It's hard to tell whether Helena truly believes in this God, or if she is simply repeating what was told to her. Suddenly, Helena's breath hitches and her fingers begin thrumming anxiously against the couch cushion and I see Cosima's hand fly from the spot she had applied too much pressure.

"I'm so sorry," Cosima gushes as her hand flutters wildly across the skin, as if making up for lost time. "Um, by God do you mean Dr. Leekie? Do you know a man named Aldous Leekie?"

Helena's face twists in sudden rage and I grasp Cosima's shoulder, ready to pull her to safety, when Helena sits up. She props herself on her elbows, and looks at me and Cosima.

"_He_ is no God. He's a dirty scientist man," she growls, spitting at his name as if he were Satan. Cosima recoils at the vehemence in Helena's voice, and I step in front of her.

"Helena, you need to calm down. He isn't here," I say, attempting to project my voice into a command, and face my hands to her as if I could physically contain her spiraling mind. Surprisingly, she listens to me and collapses into a laying position on the couch once more. Her lips tremble as she attempts to detach the emotion from her expression. When she is complacent enough, I continue. "I thought you said this God marked you."

"God is not on Earth, only His angels," she replies, and there is a hint of the old passion underlying her trembling tone as she raises a single, pale hand to gesture to the absolution of God. But the effort appears too taxing for her face pales, her eyes dim, and her arm falls to her side once again.

"Who are his angels then?"

Helena bites her lip, and looks at the carpeted floor. Within her eyes, there is a struggle of two opposing beliefs competing for dominance. She squirms and she tosses her head to the other side. With her face turned away, she mumbles her answer into the cushion. With a sigh, I force myself closer so that I may hear.

"She said the ones who share my face."

My stomach drops, and I stare down at Helena with a furrowed brow. Helena moves her hand close to her mouth and starts biting her thumb, glancing up at me occasionally with the innocent eyes of a child. From behind me, I hear Cosima lean back on her knees and sigh.

"Dude, that's complex," she breathes, forcing me to roll my eyes. I turn around and glare at her, to which she responds with a grimace and a soft apology.

With nothing left to say, we are plummeted in silence. I struggle to process all that has been said so I look to Cosima for answers. She parts her mouth to speak when suddenly her phone rings. Concern indents her eyebrows and she immediately retrieves her phone from its hiding place wedged between the black leggings and her hip bone. Glancing at the caller ID, she answers the phone with a soft smile.

"Hey, Delphine. Yeah, I'm okay. I'm with Sarah," she murmurs and glances at me. Pressing her lips together, she quickly waves for dismissal and stands up. Walking towards the bathroom, she speaks quietly into the phone so that I can barely hear her. I catch fragmented sentences as she closes the bathroom door behind her. "Still getting worse…We'll keep trying."

With Cosima locked away in the bathroom, I find myself alone with Helena once again. Turning to Helena, I look down at her curled position and find that she's watching me closely. Staring at her, I reach for the anger I felt before and come up empty-handed. It's there, a hidden aquifer, buried under my too-easily-found sympathy. I shouldn't have questioned Helena—I should have remained ignorant in my anger.

Helena's stomach grumbles.

I see her grip her stomach and close her eyes, as if she were bracing herself for the discomfort to come. Scowling, I utter a curse under my breath and stalk into the kitchen. Why do I let myself care? Helena came to my house with a personalized weapon and tried to attack me. She does this after killing Amelia and attempting to choke me with a chain. Why do I care if she's hungry? Why does it matter if she's in pain? Why does it hurt me to know of her suffering when she obviously disregards my own?

I grab a muffin from the pantry and turn it over in my hands. _Why?_ I ask myself and find an aching sensation as my only reply. With the muffin in my hand, I walk back towards Helena.

"Here," I say as I throw the muffin to Helena, who grabs it desperately from the air. I watch as she bites the plastic wrapping and quickly plucks the muffin from its translucent cage. She then presses the muffin against her lips, and I can't tell if she's trying to capture the feeling of food on her lips or if she smells something particularly special about the muffin. Either way, the feeling or the smell causes her face to blossom into a rare smile which extends from cheek to cheek like a hot blush and only disappears when she stuffs half the muffin into her mouth.

In the silence, I attempt to copy Cosima's style of questioning, "I need to ask you a few more questions."

Helena's only response is a grunt. Hesitantly, I continue. "You mentioned a woman earlier. What did she look like?"

"Blonde. Short hair," Helena mumbles, speaking around a mouth full of food. I sigh, and shake my head. _Rachel Duncan_. Of course.

"A clone," I say, and Helena closes her eyes in a miniature wince. "And you believed her, this woman who is no less a clone than Katja or Beth was. _You_ believed her."

There is a long moment of silence in which Helena stares fixedly at the floor, chewing absently.

"Yes," she murmurs finally.

"Why? Do you…" I suddenly find the sentence hard to complete, and I clear my throat. Taking a quick breath, I continue. "Do you two have a connection?"

Helena's eyes snap up to meet mine, forcing me to look away.

"No," she replies softly. "She saved me…"

"She saved you?" I prompt and her gaze becomes penetrating.

"She saved me from nothing. No. I had nothing. She took nothing away," she says disjointedly and appears to get confused by her own words. Her hand connects with her forehead and her fingernails dig into the flesh, as if she were trying to grab the jumbled thoughts from her head and organize them outside.

"I understand," I interject and she looks up at me, pausing her self-imposed torture. "I understand," I repeat in a softer tone. Her hand falls from her face and she leans back into the couch, giving up the unwinnable fight. She stares at me silently, looking as if she may want to say something else, but eventually she refocuses on eating the muffin. Helena takes smaller bites now but trades the ravenous in for the noisy. She chews dryly, staring up at the ceiling with squinted eyes, and swallows audibly several times.

I sit down on the table opposing her and rest my arms on my thighs. My fingers interlock in the open space between my legs and I watch them fold and unfold as I wait for Helena to finish eating. My mind probes the question I've been eluding the entire evening. The question I've been searching the answer to for three weeks: where is Kira? This question holds both great desire as well as great fear in my mind. For the answer to this question has the potential of fulfilling every nightmare I've seen tonight just as well as it could replenish my hope. With a deep breath, I part my lips and hope the question finds a way into the open air.

"Sarah."

I glance up from my hands and find Helena staring at me. Her expression is unreadable; her eyes are dark, flat, and unwaveringly fixed upon my face, and her lips part slightly to reveal a long, white row of her lower teeth, creating a deadened aspect to her expression. Is this it? Has my act of kindness gone ignored once again? Will she attack me now that I am alone?

Without losing sight of Helena, I move my head in order to check the bathroom door in my periphery vision. Seeing that it is still locked, I subtly view my selection of potential weapons. My options range from bloodied cotton balls to a bottle of antibiotics.

"Helena…" I say, my voice reaching a threatening lower register. My hand inches to my side, blindly reaching for one of the liquid bottles of antibiotics.

Helena cocks her head and holds out her hand. I glance down to find a small chunk of salvaged muffin in her claw-like grasp. My hand stops moving as I stare blankly down at the saliva-ridden muffin, and I meet her eyes with confusion.

"Here," she says, parroting my previous tone, and holds the muffin piece up for me again. Slowly, I take it from her hand and hold it inches from my mouth, inspecting it. Helena's lips spread into an expectant, close-lipped smile. She watches me closely. I don't understand her. Just when I think she's about to attack me, and finish the job she started, she offers me food.

"What is this?" I ask and Helena clasps her hands over her stomach, fixing her gaze on her interlocking fingers.

"I was hoping that we could be friends," she murmurs.

"We can't be friends," I reply immediately. The last thing I need is to reinvigorate Helena's obsession.

"But we can be friendly."

I stare at her with a gaping jaw. Helena doesn't make sense to me. She contradicts herself at every turn and it throws me off. Why would she offer me an olive branch? Helena is not a forgiving person; she is obsessive, angry, tantrum-prone, and lustful for vengeance. I am not innocent in her eyes nor in the eyes of others and we both know that she has killed for less than what I've done. So, the question is: Why is she smiling?

"How can you say that after everything that's happened between us? All the pain we've caused each other." I ask her, looking for an explanation. We could never really move on—to forgive and to forget—the damage between us is too bloody. Could I ever forgive her, even if she could forgive me? She looks at me dead in the eye.

"We are sisters," is all she says. Her hoarse voice is no more than a whisper and it reminds me of our chilling conversations over the phone, if that's what you could call them. Her lips stretch once again into a close-lipped smile and it makes me shudder.

I look at the muffin once again. I could hand it back to her, or I could throw it away. It's not as if she could attack me again, with her concussion on top of everything. Perhaps she could muster up a glare. But then, how helpful would she be with Kira? What would I do tomorrow, or the day after that, or years from now? Could I kill her again? Or will I live in fear that Helena will heal and come back for me, or worse, come back for Kira?

I pop the muffin piece into my mouth, chewing slowly. Helena's reaction is subtle, so much in fact that I doubt I could have noticed a change had I not been scrutinizing her every move, and I see that her face doesn't change. Her eyes, however, do change. A light settles in the dark expanse—like a star glimmering in the night sky.

We can't be friends, and we never will be friends. I can't define what we are, not exactly. I expect our relationship drifts somewhere in-between all definitions. Together, we are the victim and the murderer, the predator and the prey. We are neither friends nor enemies; neither family nor strangers. We are connected. I can tell no more about what we are than what we will become. I suppose the ambiguity runs in our blood, all of our blood. The mystery surrounds us all.


End file.
